CMUS 218 Commercial Music Production and Audio

This course provides training in studio production techniques. Students learn studio miking for instruments and voice, digital audio workstations, and general techniques for studio production.

Those who pursue music as a career often need skills in miking, mixing, and music production. This is particularly true for those training in commercial music. This course will prepare the student to produce demos of his or her music and to engage appropriately with music production technology.

Textbook readings and lecture presentations

No details available.

Course Requirements Checklist

After reading the Course Syllabus and Student Expectations, the student will complete the related checklist found in the Course Overview.

Discussion: Focused Learning

Discussions are collaborative learning experiences. Therefore, the student will post one thread of at least 250-300 words. The student must then post 2 replies of at least 150 words. For each thread, the students must support his or her assertions with at least one scholarly citation in Turabian format. Each reply must incorporate at least one scholarly citations in Turabian format.

Project Assignments (3)

The student will be assigned a collaborative project in which he or she mics instruments and voice, uses basic ProTools skills, mixes audio, and produces a song demo recording.

Project: Instrumental Track Assignment

The student will ensure progress through the course project by completing a music track as the first stage. This assignment is intended to have the instrumental production completed as the student moves into vocals and mixing in future project stages.

Project: Vocal Comp Assignment 

As the second stage of the course project, this assignment is based on real-world scenarios and techniques for capturing and editing vocals in the music production process. The student will be able to apply the techniques learned in this assignment to his or her future professional work. The general workflows and editing within ProTools will translate to other digital audio workstation software.

Project: Final Assignment

For the third and final stage of the project, this assignment exactly models how a student may submit his or her creative content to a potential client such as a producer, publisher, record label, etc.

(CLO: A, B, C, D)

Quiz: Project Song Choice

The student will select a Christian-themed song and composer for his or her course project. The quiz will include 1 short-answer question and have no time limit.

Quizzes (5)

Quizzes will be given on a regular basis to test understanding of assigned Learn items. Quizzes are open-book/open-notes. Questions will be true/false, multiple-choice and multiple-answer, and the quiz will have time limit of 60 minutes. Each quiz may be attempted twice, with the highest score counting towards the grade. (CLO: A, B, C)

Quiz: Final Exam

A final exam will be given to assess each student’s knowledge and skill in audio production. (CLO: A, B, C, D)